Rev. Wright was right: racism lives in America
When all this fuss started over Obama's minister, Jeremiah Wright, I initially thought he was a crank and was bothered by the fact that Obama associated with him. I dug up what little information that I could about him (his offensive statements are rarely presented in context), and my opinion didn't change. I was particularly bothered by how he racialized theology and ancient (Roman) history.
Ironically, his critics chose to focus on Wright's view of America, where I disagreed with him but not in the same fundamental way that I disagreed with his depiction of Jesus' execution as being a black/white thing. Even more ironically, as his critics increased their assault, they proved that he was right: racism still has a substantial hold on America.
I want to be clear about where I have a problem with his critics:
I have absolutely no problem when a person criticizes the racial status quo in America, whether it be a particular policy designed to address racial issues, or various notions about the meaning of race. For example, while I think it is simplistic to categorize people according to race, I acknowledge that there is genetic variation among humans, that certain genetic traits are correlated, and that there most likely is some genetic basis for variation in human behavior and abilities.
Wright's critics started to lose me when they dismissed the possibility that Wright would have any reason to have a chip on his shoulder (Huckabee had some good thoughts on that ). I get suspicious when a person makes assertions such as the implausible claim that contemporary anti-black racism doesn't decrease opportunities for blacks, or that the legacy of historical racism shouldn't have much of an impact on blacks today. At best, these claims reveal a certain ignorance of our society, or a lack of appreciation for how much we inherit from previous generations. More troubling, they suggest substantial contempt for the experience and interpretations of those blacks who claim that they are affected by racism (past and present). The worst interpretation is that this dismissal is just a weak attempt to sweep the issue of racism under the rug, so that the racists can continue their practices without criticism. One of the most offensive ways to dismiss black complaints is to argue that blacks actually benefited from being enslaved, as David Horowitz did
several years ago.
Finally, I came to agree that racism runs deep in America after reading Pat Buchanan's A Brief for Whitey (point by point critique at Too Sense
). This commentary oozes with contempt for blacks--in how it address both in their claims of racist injustice and in the social problems in the black community. It also feeds white fear of blacks, claiming that the most common "hate crime" is black on white violence. Finally, Buchanan revisits Horowitz's assertion that blacks benefited from slavery, but takes it even further by incorporating the old slaver rationalization that "We're saving the souls of those savages!"
Buchanan is not a fringe figure--he is probably more influential that Wright. His disdain for American blacks and contempt for non-Christians has finally convinced me that racism is still strong in America.
- adam ricketson's diary
- Login or register to post comments
Comments :
Actually Buchanan is a fringe
figure. He left the Republic Party in 2000 and ran as an independant. I think he got less than 1% of the vote. So because there are still bigoted white people in the USA, you're OK with Wright saying the US Gov't gave AIDS to Black people, or saying 911 was a US conspiracy, or being a cheerleader of Loui Farakhan.?
name the enemy, win the war
Buchanan's influence
He gets lots of air time. Do a Google search on "A brief for whitey" and see where it got picked up: Townhall, Yahoo, and a number of smaller publication.
From wikipedia:
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
A question: getting book sales numbers
Does anyone know how to find out how many books Pat Buchanan has sold?
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
what wright says
I've never heard of that 911 quote. Can you point me to it?
I dug up the AIDS quote, which was generally (mis)reported as:
This "quote" merges two different points that Wright was making, thereby suggesting a particular interpretation (that we create AIDS to keep the third world in poverty) that was not justified by the actual quote:
If you know of anyplace where he has gone into depth on this topic, I'd like to see it. As it stands, he does seem to be suggesting that the USA intentionally created/spread HIV.
I think that's wrong, but it's not totally delusional.
Anyway, I only said that I agreed with him that racism is alive and well.
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
It's not just wrong to say that the US
started the AIDs virus. It's a lie. And he is telling thousands of people in his Chuch that lie. With regard to 911 quote, it's on the tapes. Why defend this bigoted fool?
name the enemy, win the war
It is also a lie to blame
the gays for the 9/11 attacks. Yet Jerry Falwell died with many followers, and was looked to as a respected spiritual leader.
Isn't there a separation of church and state. Or should we get tapes of every word every politicians minister has ever said. Including Jim Hagee's assertion that the Catholic church is like a whore.
Wright and Ron Paul both blame America for 9/11. Where's the outrage against Ron Paul's anti-American statements. And worse does Ron Paul support Obama.
It is the economy, stupid.
provide evidence or shut up
You made an assertion, and I asked for the supporting evidence.
I can understand if you initially assumed that i would be familiar with the evidence you are referring to, or if you simply didn't have time to respond to my request for evidence.
However, now that I have asked for evidence, you are willfully refusing to provide it...suggesting that it's my responsibility to figure out how you came to your conclusions. I've looked for the sermon you are referring to, and did not find it.
This isn't the first time that you've made vague accusastions and refused to provide evidence when pressed
. Compare this to the accusations that I made in the above article -- they are specific enough that you can refute the, and I have made efforts to track down the evidence when I've had a clue as to what you were talking about.
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
It appears you are correct that Jerimiah
Wright is not heard, so far, on the tapes as saying 911 was a US Gov't conspiracy, all he said (while they were still digging thru the rubble at the WTC) was the US deserved what it got on 911--"the chickens coming home to roost". As to the left and its lack of concern for the islamist threat, that is an impression I get from reading and listening to left wing opinions over the years. It is my OPINION.
As to "shut up", I have to remind you that SC is supposed to be a webblog that allows differing opinions. There are plenty of left wing websites--like Dkos and Huffington Post, etc.--where you can post and have others agree with your worldview--but that 's not the idea here.
name the enemy, win the war
Bush/Cheney's 'UnPatriotic' ties to bin Laden family
Rev. Falwell damns America, saying the US deserved attacks, for it's lack of morality. Rev. Falwell gives tons of money to GOP. I assume you had no problem with this......?
So you really need to get off your high horse of conflating Rev. Wright to Obama.
You get so hysterical the words of one minister, yet you happily overlook all the connections that Bush/Cheney have to the perpetrators of 9/11, the Saudi's and specifically the bin Laden family.
It doesn't bother you at all the Bush/Cheney speak to the Saudi's (terrorists) regularly. Why are you not calling these US/Saudi associations appeasement and capitulation to terrorists? I assume you have no problem with these terrorist connections .....? It's just business as usual?
You keep flogging this Wright flap as if no one else believes that our own govt overlooked warning signs that attacks were coming.
Do you have amnesia?
According to the polls
half of Americans believe that our government consciously ignored the warning signs that led to 9/11.
It is therefore hardly surprising that blacks who have been left to rot in urban ghettos, might have a different perception of how the government implements policy.
Since President Reagan, the systematic push to withhold incentives to black people, isolating them in urban ghetto's without opportunity and calling them lazy, while they stand in unemployment lines unable to find or get work, the oppression might create some resentment towards govt policies. Especially this ridiculous notion that there is no racism. That's blatant double speak.
Wright was saying the same thing as Ron Paul, only in more colorful language. US military occupation in many countries is seen as exploitation and there is a blowback.
You need to get off your high horse about what IS and what IS not patriotic.
Since you have never noted Rev. Falwell's damnation of America, yet constantly blather own about Pastor Wright, can one assume the obvious. The only reason it upsets you is because Pastor Wright is black.
It is the economy, stupid.
I do not say that
Barak Obama's views are the same as JWright's, the point here is that Obama apparently for years felt comfortable around, and had as his spiritual advisor, someone who expressed these views from the pulpit and in the Church newsletter, which presumably Barak and Michelle Obama must have occassionally read.
As to Bush and Bin Laden, etc., I agree with you that the close association with SA is a form of appeasement of our Islamofascist enemy. I think it has been done for strategic reasons( we need the oil). I am hopeful that a President McCain will be less appeasing.
BTW, we are having some confusion here about whether JWright said 911 was a conspiracy--he certainly said we deserved it. I originally said that is what JWright said, then Adam R. said I was wrong, so I accepted the correction (because I couldn't find it on the tapes), now you--Miss L-- seem to be saying Wright did say it was a conspiracy. Whatever.........
name the enemy, win the war
YOu are making a false claim
that the right always does. That the left, Obama, Kerry and Democrats in general are the 'blame America first crowd', by trying to turn Obama into Wright. They are two separate people.
Why did GWB take millions from Rev. 'blame America first' Falwell, after 9/11 and why was that not an issue for you?
It is the economy, stupid.
Mr. Sandbox: the soundbyte or the sermon
if you are so curious about what else Mr. Wright has to say, here is a text, and some context of his sermon.
The jist of the sermon is being purposefully distorted for political purposes.
But if you would like to read more about the spiritual advisement, and you are truly interested in something besides scoring political points against those you label as 'the far left', then may I recommend you read the whole piece.
The Right Story
From the bible: Psalm 137, verse 9 as it discusses the cycle of violence.
That would be a quote from Ambassador Ed Peck who was interviewed on Fox News. I will link to the video so you can see it.
Before you so eagerly pass judgement, maybe you should inform yourself a little more. All you are doing is perpetrating a cycle of hate.
The soundbyte vs the sermon. The soundbyte serves your preconceived prejudices. The sermon does not.
It is the economy, stupid.
express your opinion, if you'd like
First, I never said "agree with me, or shut up".
Second, this isn't about you simply expressing your opinion and suggesting that we agree to disagree; you challenged my opinion and defamed Rev. Wright.
For example:
Such challenges require support.
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
the Wright stuff
It's not a lie if he believes it. It may border on paranoia (depending on how racist America really is), but I see no reason to believe that he doesn't believe it.
From the evidence I've seen (which I provided, above), he isn't "telling thousands...that lie"--he said a single sentence. It's not as if he dedicated an entire sermon to it, or wrote a book about it, or brought it up repeatedly.
Why defend the bigoted fool? Because I'm not sure that he's a bigoted fool. This entire issue has been ridiculously sensationalized--by partisans and election reporters. No one has bothered to examine what he was actually trying to say or why he believes the things that he believes. He was instantly judged to be wrong, and we instantly moved to the issue of how Obama would respond. I'd like to take a minute to ask "what the hell is actually the issue here?" ... but the Clintonites, Republicans, and scared-of-being-proved-wrong nationalists won't allow that.
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
Gallup Polls say Wright 'controversy' irrelevant
Gallop Sez
I don't know how much faith I have in polls, (unless they agree with me), but Obama is now 10 points ahead of Clinton.
Obama 52%
Clinton 42%
It is the economy, stupid.
buchanan's political vote
Buchanan was able to get about 20% of the vote
in the Republican primaries in both 1992 and 1996, despite the fact that he really doesn't have any credentials (outside of being a speechwriter for former Presidents). To say that his racism doesn't reflect a much broader trend in America, you'd have to argue that either he has changed or America (the Republicans) have changed substantially in the past ten years. I don't know enough about his history to say anything, but I think we can only appeal to a limited amount of change within America -- if there was still that much racism 30 years after the civil rights act, then we probably have another 30 or 40 years to go before the issue of racism is really put to rest.
I don't think that his Reform party run really counts because voters have a very strong bias against voting for minor party candidates.
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
Personally
A part of me would like to see Pat Buchanon Swift-boated.
Some of his statements, are equal to Wrights, imho and should be rejected and denounced, yet he has a media platform to express his views.
On the other hand, that is just an aspect of his persona that I dislike and I don't think it represents the whole person.
Interesting that both Buchanon and Wright are older folks that lived through the 60's and have greatly different perceptions of the civil rights movement.
It is the economy, stupid.
More on Buchanan's influence
Thinking more about sandbox's claim that Buchanan can't garner any significant support anymore...
Buchanan has obviously fallen out with the Republican establishment, and he can't stand McCain. This fracture is mainly about foreign policy, but is also due to the fact that Buchanan doesn't consider McCain to be a real conservative on social issues (i.e. an aggressive culture warrior), including immigration.
While investigating Buchanan, I noticed all the advertisements for Ron Paul on his websites, and remembered that he endorsed Ron Paul without much effect. That indicates that most Republicans don't care much for him or his ideas anymore.
However, we have to consider whether it is just disagreement over foreign policy...so we can hone in on the immigration issue. While xenophobia was a regular part of Republican rhetoric during the primary race, it didn't seem to have much influence on how people voted...suggesting that the Buchanan branch of the Republican party has lost its influence.
Finally, to get straight at measuring the influence of Buchanan's racist attitudes, I looked at the response to the essay in question (A Brief for Whitey). This essay received the expected criticisms from leftist circles, but I didn't see any response from right wing commentators. Is that because they saw nothing wrong with what he said, or because they consider him irrelevant?
I can't answer that, but I did notice that the comments associated with the syndicated publication of this essay were generally supportive, with a few criticisms over at Townhall. Does that response represent the general readership at Townhall, or is it just the Buchanan groupies? Again, I can't tell.
I'll be following this issue for a while. I wish I knew how to find out how well his books sell.
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
Buchanan was practicing a little cognitive dissonance
in supporting Paul. His support for Paul was about Foreign Policy, Spending and Immigration and perhaps abortion (the latter two being very unpopular with Paul's "Base"). Spending and FP are two areas Paul would have had a strong influence.
Buchanan's views on trade, many social issues and some other specific economic policies areas were in considerable with Paul. But I suppose they didn't get as high of a priority since the machinations of government play a larger role on them.
Buchanan has been an isolationist since
I can remember. He opposed the current Iraq war and was opposed to the first Gulf War, which, if Buchanan got his way, would have allowed Sadaam Hussein to keep Kuwait. Presumably if Iraq kept rolling on into Saudi Arabia in 1990, Buchannan would have said that's not our problem too. I think in one of his latest books he even questioned whether the US should have gone to war against Germany in WWII after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. He is definitly sympathetic to the "Amercia Firsters" prior to WWII. Of course he supported Vietnam War, because it was anti-communist.
But the Republican Party has moved on, and he and others who think in an isolationist way (like Ron Paul) feel left out in the Republican Party, but they have nowhere else to go ideologically. If you look at the Republican Presidential debates of a few months ago, none of the candidates, except Ron Paul, wanted undconditional pull-out from Iraq, and the candidate who talked about "victory" in Iraq--McCain--actually won the nomination. So Buchannan and other paleo-conservatives, in foreign policy area, now find their foreign policy views better represented by the left-wing of the Democratic Party (represented by Barak Obama) which wants unconditional withdrawal from Iraq.
name the enemy, win the war
You need to get your facts straight
Neither Clinton nor Obama want unconditional withdrawal from Iraq.
Stop with the inflammatory rhetoric. It does our country a disservice.
It is the economy, stupid.
More racism in America
For the heck of it, I am document more instances of "respectable" racism that have popped up recently:
David Weigal at Reason dissectes two rumours
circulating during this campaign: that blacks will riot if Obama looses and that Michelle Obama goes on anti-white tirades.
On more subtle notes, Fox news identified Michelle Obama as "Obama's baby mama
". Regardless of Michelle's previous use of the term "my baby's daddy" to refer to Barak, it was blatantly inappropriate for a "news" program to use that term, especially when they were being critical of Obama. It's hard to believe that this was an innocent mistake, any more than it could be an innocent mistake to refer to someone as a "dumb fuck" on network news. In that context, the actual video is hilariously ironic 
.
If we want to see malicious intent in this episode (which is quite easy given Fox's antagonism to Obama: one commenter half-jokingly endorsed his assassination, while an anchor suggested that he may be a terrorist)--then we only have to consider how the term "baby mamma" applied to a black woman would evoke some of the worst associations in the mind of fox's "middle America" audience: low socio-economic status and broken families. They would have been well prepared to make such associations as a result of racist propaganda such as Rush Limbaugh's "Barak the magic negro", Michale Savage's contempt for non-standard dialects of American English. Andrew Sullivan says it wel
l:
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
Maybe this wasn't national news, but....
back in 2005 in Toledo, Ohio, some local black youths decided to go on a shopping spree for "free" swag.
All because some Neo-Nazi's canceled a scheduled rally to protest the danger black gangs presented to white Toledo residents.
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,